Journey - Book II of the Five Worlds Trilogy

JOURNEY: THE FIVE WORLDS SAGA, BOOK 2

Al Sarrantonio

A Mystique Press Production

Mystique Press is an imprint of Crossroad Press

Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

Digital Edition Copyright © 2011 / Al Sarrantonio

Copy-edited by: Christine Steendam

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Meet the Author

A
l Sarrantonio is the author of forty-five books. He is a winner of the Bram Stoker Award and has been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, the International Horror Guild Award, the Locus Award and the Private Eye Writers of America Shamus Award.

His novels, spanning the horror, science fiction, fantasy, mystery and western genres, include Moonbane, Skeletons, House Haunted, The Five Worlds Trilogy, The Mars Trilogy, West Texas, Orangefield, and Hallows Eve, the last two part of his Halloween cycle of stories.

Hailed as “a master anthologist” by Booklist, he has edited numerous collections, including the highly acclaimed 999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense, Redshift: Extreme Visions of Speculative Fiction, Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy, and , and, most recently, Stories, with co-editor Neil Gaiman, and Halloween: New Poems.

His short stories have appeared in magazines such as Heavy Metal, Twilight Zone, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Realms of Fantasy, Analog, and Amazing, as well as in anthologies such as The Year’s Best Horror Stories, Visions of Fantasy: Tales from the Masters, Great Ghost Stories, and The Best of Shadows. His best horror stories have been collected in Toybox, Hornets and Others, and Halloween and Other Seasons.

He has had numerous book club sales, and his work has been translated into more than a dozen languages and appeared in comic book form. He currently lives in New York’s historic Hudson Valley region.

Other Books by Al Sarrantonio

Novels:

The Worms

Moonbane

Skeletons

October

The Boy With Penny Eyes

House Haunted

Thomas Mullin Mysteries

West Texas

Kitt Peak

The Masters of Mars Trilogy

Haydn of Mars

Sebastian of Mars

Queen of Mars

The Five Worlds Trilogy

Exile

Journey

Return

Collections:

Toybox

Hornets and Others

Halloween & Other Seasons

The Orangefield Series

Horrorween

Hallows Eve

Halloweenland

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For Tom Disch,

Mentor:

With long overdue thanks.

Chapter 1

T
eacher said, “The Carthaginians, an ancient Earth race, were known primarily for their migratory abilities within their own small sphere.”

For the fiftieth time this morning, Visid Sneaden’s eyes wandered from the holographic Screen image of the robed instructor to the room’s floor-to-ceiling window. Outside, red dust was kicking up; it had been threatening to storm since sunrise. The pink sky had visibly darkened, and at the horizon what looked like the cone of a tornado had appeared briefly, toying with the rim of Wells Crater. But so far, the Screen had not blanked and they had not been sent home.

Visid prayed for release; had prayed all week. She was weary of lessons, wearied most of all by their increased intensity. Instruction was bad enough, but the recent increase in daily school hours from nine to eleven had incurred in Visid, and in her classmates, she supposed, a condition close to dust blindness. So much information—most of it tedious—and so little time to digest it. It was said that there was a reason; was whispered in the dormitories, in the lowest tones, that the reason was a drastic one: that they were to be returned to Venus within the month. Visid didn’t believe this: there had been such rumors before.

So instead she prayed for … dust storms.

A
nd still the day dragged on, without release. At lunchtime, which had recently been cut in half, Visid stayed, as usual, by herself. A cluster of other students sat by the Screen, listening to Doctrine lectures; but since it was not mandatory now, Visid chose to abstain. She knew that her aloofness, and especially her reluctance to indulge in extra Doctrine, had been duly noted; she knew that somewhere, someone was compiling her minor rebellions into a compact evidential file, no doubt entered on a data card, and that sooner or later she would be interviewed about it.

But she didn’t care, even though she was not rebellious at all.

She was … bored.

The lessons, which were thorough but repetitive, had ceased to be of interest to her months ago. The other students around her, even those she had nominally made friends with, such as Arnie, didn’t seem to notice that they were being fed the same diet day after day, only with different seasonings. In Visid’s mind, once the facts had been absorbed, she found the outer coating with which they were presented to be of no interest or use. The occasional new tidbit or fact she was able to glean from the mountain of Canon (no one dared say propaganda) she was fed was not enough to sustain her interest.

And so her mind wandered.

And she prayed for dust storms.

A
fter lunch came Theory, and after that came Fact (indistinguishable from Doctrine) and then Culture (again indistinguishable from Doctrine). For a few moments, her attention was drawn from the window to the Screen during today’s Culture lesson, which concerned Titan. The teacher, a gaunt, almost sickly-looking man with light Martian features, was full of zeal, which usually produced ennui in Visid. But in the midst of his harangue about the evils of Titanians, and especially the depraved mind and ancestry of Wrath-Pei, the present Titanian despot and former pirate, whose ouster from Mars (now celebrated as a Martian holiday) where he had once “fouled the atmosphere of the already corrupt Senate, to the point where his poison had so infected his fellow Martians that only the High Leader himself, then a humble servant of the people known only as Prime Cornelian, was able to free Mars of the base Wrath-Pei himself and then, with the heroic act of a true patriot and lover of Mars, to free the planet of the vile and contemptible institution the Martian Senate, which was Wrath-Pei’s base for his loathsome operations, including but not confined to child prostitution, the eating of human flesh, the boiling of pregnant mothers alive,” etc., etc.—in the midst of this mishmash, Visid learned something new.

It was long known to Martian Schoolchildren and their Venusian expatriate cousins, that Wrath-Pei confined himself to the “stench-filled environs of Titan itself; Titan: whose atmosphere was unbreathable to any but corrupt beings, whose poison-filled oceans made those of Earth look paradisaic, whose surface was warmed by no natural sun but by an infernal internal heat source, which also produced an artificially enhanced gravity similar to that of the penal planet Pluto; whose perpetual night (so appropriate) was only broken by unnatural lights, and where the warming Sun would shine but weakly; and whose hell-darkened sky, nearly as black as the rogue exile planet Pluto’s, was dominated not by Sol but by devilish Saturn.” Never in any lesson in Ethics, Doctrine, History, Science, Politics, Theory, Fact, or Religion (where the satanic qualities of Titan’s dominant religion, Moral Guidance, were more than emphasized) had Visid ever heard a single utterance even hinting that the despised Wrath-Pei was anywhere other than his own planet. It was not necessary for Martian mothers to scare their children with threats of Wrath-Pei, because the baby-eater and pirate would never dare come near Mars to begin with.

But today, there was a slip—and new information.

Deep into the usual blather, the teacher suddenly gave a hitch in his speech, as if his eyes had hit unfamiliar words on his prompter, and then he continued, “And so, dear students, when the vile corrupter, Wrath-Pei, is turned back to his nest, driven back down into the befouled Titanian muck from which he seeks to rise…”